In order to postpone a match, Ballybrack FC, an amateur club in Ireland lied about the death of one of its player.

According to Raidió Teilifís Éireann., the club was due to play Arklow Town in Ireland’s Leinster Senior League last Saturday, but the after the club announced that one of the club’s foreign players, Spaniard Fernando Nuno la Fuente, had died in a terrible car accident, the match was called off.

The entire league was stunned by the news, as a minute of silence was held in honour of the player before other matches commenced.

Players even wore black armbands in memory of la Fuente, and some teams even expressed their condolences on social media.

However, the League officials soon found out that Fernando Nuno la Fuente’s alleged death had been a ruse to get them to postpone the game with Arklow Town.

“Things started to unravel here when we followed up on Monday to see if we could get in touch with the lad’s family and see if there was anything we could do,” League chairman David Moran said.

“They said the body was already back in Spain, which didn’t really add up.

“We got a call back saying that his body had been sent back to Spain and that’s when the alarm bells rang. I was saying ‘what do you mean?’. They wouldn’t have been able to do an autopsy or whatever in that time,” Moran added.

“We started investigating it yesterday and then I got a call saying that he had just left to go home to Spain. “I’m delighted the young lad’s alive but I’m absolutely dumbfounded by what’s going on.”

LaFuente said that his full-time employer, a software company, had simply relocated him from Dublin to Galway.

“I was aware there was going to be some story on me but I thought it was going to be me breaking a leg or something like that,” LaFuente told RTE. “I was home yesterday after my work finished. I was playing some video games. … (My colleagues) started sending me all these news articles and mass media. And that’s how I found out I was dead.”

Ballybrack FC took to their Facebook page to apologise for what it described as “a gross error of judgement” and announced that “the person in question has been relieved of all footballing duties.”